In my wandering clickery one day, I came across one of those sites
by a ``Web Designer'' that was like all such sites are: a great
mutual-appreciation society where this core set of ``Designers'' put on
a show of how intellectual and
introspective they all are, only barely disguising the fact that
really it's just an incestuous
back-patting club, consisting of nothing
but self-promotion. One assumes that these people are all the only
people listed as references on each others'
resumés. They spend a lot
of time talking about ``Design'' in the vaguest
possible terms, and appealing to each other for
authority.

I followed a link on this site (which was to an IP address
instead of a host name!) and got to a page named something like
http://666.66.66.666/oldpage/index.htm. (I especially liked the
``htm'' at the end, because any time something reminds me of
DOS, it makes me feel like kotowing in the direction of Redmond: those
kids at Micros~1 sure know what they're doing.) Anyway, this page said, in part:

A giant honking anim-gif image went here.
This image was all text, with ``404'' in it.

The second reason may be that your browser is simply
too old, too new or not advanced enough. Due to the extreme
amount of DHTML / HTML / JS wizardry we're constantly pulling out
of our hat here at [whatever], we have to draw a line
somewhere when it comes to supporting all browsers on all
platforms. Directly below you'll find a list of the browsers we
currently support:

Internet Explorer v.4.0 to v.5.5 ( Mac & PC )

Netscape Communicator v4.01 to 4.72 ( Mac & PC )

As it happened, I was looking at this page with
Netscape 4.72! But apparently Unix is too
``beta'' for them.

What kind of moron does this stuff by inclusion? What kind
of moron writes HTML that doesn't degrade gracefully? The language was
designed that way. That's why unrecognized tags are
ignored by default. I mean, just let it through! It'll
probably work anyway! It might not have the snazzy space-age layout,
but the text will actually show up.

Oh, there's my bias -- I was assuming that the text was the
important part. More the fool I.

Unless these people are jodi.org
or something completely visual like that (a web page that is really
an application rather than prose), then these
hopeless
fuckers are just meat for the beast.

``Wizardry.'' ``Wizardry.'' Half a megabyte of crosshatched
background images and flickery stick figures
that turn the written word into an epileptic fruit salad is what passes
for ``Wizardry'' now!

I went through my bookmarks asking
myself the question, ``which of these sites do I think have good
design,'' and it was a very hard question to answer, because I kept
finding myself saying, ``this is a good site, or that
is,'' but the sites didn't have much ``Design'' at all, not in the
sense that the ``Web Designer'' peanut gallery seems to see it.

There are lots of sites that play interesting games with HTML and
JavaScript and so on, but the only ones that have ever actually
impressed me, rather than irritated me, are the ones that are
non-verbal: the ones where the
bells and whistles are the only content.
For such sites, their beauty lies in the fact that they are confusing
and random and you don't know where you're
going next or whether it's supposed to look like that or whether its a
bug. That stuff is great.

I once saw a page that said ``this page best viewed by coming over
to my office and looking at it on my monitor.'' You don't often see
honesty like that.

More often, you see sites whose top-level page is entirely devoid
of text and hyperlinks. It's usually black,
and usually has some kind of time-wasting animation going on. These
days, more often than not, a huge Flash
file with a spinning logo.

As far as I can tell, the whole point of having an intro page is to
sit there and say, ``I am so cool. I am so cool that I don't even have
to tell you what I do. I am so cool that I can sit here and just
burn time while you look at things whoosh around
my logo. Isn't my logo great? I hope you like it because I spent a
lot of money on it. Me me me, it's all
about me. Oh, you wanted to actually get
information off of my
web site? Maybe see who I am or what I have to say? Maybe
buy a product? Oh,
ok, if you insist. Just a few more seconds. Ok, there you go. Here's
my real top-level page.''

Madness!

Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to make your web pages look
good to the largest number of people. But it's a matter of priorities:
if you place a higher value on the layout than on the
meaning, then you don't value your words very highly. So why
should I? If you tell me that I'm not allowed to look at your page at
all unless I can display it in what you consider the ``proper'' manner,
then you're telling me that your popup windows and flaming yellow
borders are more important than your ideas.

These days, I mostly browse the web through
Netscape version 3.02,
with JavaScript, Java, document-specified fonts, and plugins turned
off. And it works great, and here's why: sites fall into three
categories:

Sites that actually have content on them, in which case
they don't depend on JavaScript, Layers, specific fonts, or plugins.
They may use them, but I don't notice,
and don't need to care, because the site works fine without them.

Clever-clever sites that use all the latest bells and
whistles, but that happen to work anyway if your browser
ignores all the crap. These sites tend to
look far worse than plain text would. But they do load fast,
and won't ever crash the browser.

Too-clever-by-half sites that don't work at all.
Usually these sites come up with a completely blank page, and if I do
``View Source,'' I can see the nature of their evil. Less frequently,
the page will come up with some snotty admonishment, blaming me, the
web, Netscape, or God for the fact that I can't
see their page: blaming, basically, everyone but the designer, who is
the only person whose fault it is.

But that's just fine -- because sites that do this invariably
ALSO DON'T HAVE ANY CONTENT ON THEM. So
this is a great litmus test that saves me
lots and lots of time! If the site uses all the latest crap, then it
means that whoever's site it is is more concerned with appearance than
content, and the only reason for that would be that their content is
crap. If they had worthwhile content, they
wouldn't have to dress it up in gaudy trappings to get people to think
that there's something
there.

Another benefit of this approach is that Netscape version 3 is
really, gloriously small. Back when it was released, that browser had
a bad reputation as being huge and
bloated. But that was in 1996. The world
has moved on. By today's standards, it's a featherweight. As they
say, ``welcome to the next level.''

I think my standards have lowered enough that now I think ``good
design'' is when the page doesn't irritate the living fuck out of me.
When I see a site that is primarily text, that doesn't change the
default font, that doesn't load a dozen images with nothing but text in
them, that doesn't hide the URLs inside a frame cell, that doesn't make
it impossible for me to use the Back button, and that basically shows
some restraint by doing an index or two, and then giving me the actual
content without bells, whistles,
hoops, mallets, and
high-voltage rope bridges... that makes me breathe a sigh of
relief.

It's the same kind of feeling I get when I see someone in an
SUV slowing down and
using their turn signals.